What is causing such a drastic difference in FICO scores?

[Anonymous]

Not to give a massive backstory, a few years back I got laid off from my previous profession, had just claimed medical leave for a surgery I had right before they decided to lay me off (which yeah I should have went to court over, but depression is a hell of a drug) and since I was already in a no work period (yearly we would hit a point where there was no work and we would have to UI) I almost no UI left, no way to work since I was in rehab after surgery, and yeah dead broke. So things had to go without getting paid. Fast forward today, I now am in a different city in a different career field, and stable (I know I wont be laid off, the only way I'm leaving here is on my own accord or fired). So I started looking into fixing my awful credit.

After working on it, I was able to get my scores up from 540~ish to all of them at 620. Well that is my FICO 8 score anyways. My mortgage score was lower, in fact when I first bought a myFICO subscription it was 40 points lower (at that point I was at 590 for the FICO 8, 550-545 for the mortgage ones). But now that my FICO 8 is at 620 for all three I figured the mortgage ones would move up with them. But instead they have stayed the same. In fact my lowest mortgage score is 526 almost 100 points lower! So how in the world can there be 100-80 points difference for all 3 scores? What can I do to get that score up? I'm not buying for at least another year but I still want to be on top of it and make sure I can walk in and walk out without having to deal with much hassle.

[Anonymous]

The best practical plan is to make sound rebuilding credit-cleanup choices -- and these will help you regardless of the model -- coupled with not trying to "peer into the invisible things of God" (Martin Luther).  In this case the latter means avoiding spending your energy guessing how the secret proprietary algorithms work, whuch can drive you crazy.

I will give you ome example of a known difference.  If you have one or more small collections (< $99) then that would not hurt your FICO 8 scores at all but would really hurt your mortgage scores. 

Similarly if you have a lot of Day 30 and Day 60 lates that happened a long time ago (over 2 years ago) these will begin to have a small impact to your FICO 8 score, whereas they will continue to hurt your mortgage scores at full strength for as long as they are present on the reports (i.e. up to 7 years).

Is there a particular reason you are concerned about your mortgage scores?  Are you planning to buy a house at some point?  If so, when?

[Anonymous]

Hey CGID.  The OP mentions that he is planning to buy a house, but is looking at that purchase being at least a year away.

My two main questions for the OP are what his payment history and utilization look like currently, specifically. 

In order to accomplish this, I suggest listing out every negative item on your credit report along with the date that it happened and the severity of the negative (30 day, 90 day, collection etc).  For utilization, you want to list out every account that you have, it's type (revolver, loan, etc), it's current balance and it's limit if it's a revolver or it's original balance if it's a loan. 

Based on that information provided, we'll be able to give you more solid recommendations.  It's commonly believed that mortgage scores are more greatly adversely impacted by number of accounts with balances relative to FICO 8 scores, so if you've got a bunch of revolvers all with balances this could be hurting your mortgage scores quite a bit as well.

[DollyLama]

I take it you have a subscription to myfico, since that is the only place you can get the mortgage scores. You may see alerts on your FICO 8s only move up or down due to circumstances, but the subscription usually is update ALL scores every 3 months, mortgage, bankcard, auto, etc. 

When was the last 3b pull? 

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone. I had no idea that the effects of bad past did not go down over the years, that is really disheartening, but can't do much about it, and if I have to wait 2 or 3 years versus 1, then I guess I'll have to.

As for the questions about what all is on there, I have way too many 30 days past due on my account because of several factors (not only did my past job can me while I was on medical leave, it used to have a slow down in work every year around Christmas time until April, so yeah there were a few 30, 60 days; also my parents weren't the best with things they would get in my name..which yeah can't do much about that). But for utilization I'm good. I keep my debt around 10-15% (it does fluctuate month to month if I decide to make a large purchase on credit towards the end of the month which does happen). So I bet it has to do with my large 30 days late, 60 days late, and 13 collections (which 7 of which are small medical bills and a larger one from when I had to have knee surgery [all of them from when I had to go on medical leave and didn't have a job]). So I guess I should try the pay for deletion route for the collections, but I have no idea what to do with the 30/60 day stuff from 4, 5, and 6 years ago other than wait.

Again thank you all, and sorry for the late response, been super busy this whole week and haven't been able to get back to my computer.

[Anonymous]

Is a 60 day late the latest reporting you have on your CR, or do you have any 90+ lates?

I think tackling the removal of those collections (PFDs) would be in your best interest.  I wouldn't worry about the 30's and 60's for now, especially since you said they are 3-6 years old.